History Trivia / HomeAlone

* SequelGap: Released ten years after ''4''.

*** However, after the January 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol instigated by Trump and his supporters, Culkin joined the call in [[https://www.gamespot.com/articles/macaulay-culkin-joins-the-call-to-have-trump-digitally-removed-from-home-alone-2/1100-6486301/ replacing Trump's image... with an image of the older Culkin himself]].

!Trivia specific to the movies

* OldShame: While she doesn't appear to be really deeply regretful about the movie, Creator/ScarlettJohansson is aware that it's not the most popular ''Home Alone'', having conceded in an interview in ''Series/LateNight with Creator/SethMeyers'' that she was really surprised that, when she showed the film to her daughter, she was really into it, admitting that she though that "the plot is a little thin."

* TheOtherDarrin: All of the returning characters are played by different actors. Daniel Stern, in particular, refused to go near the script, so Marv is played by French Stewart, and he's also dressed like Harry, for some reason.

!Other Trivia

* CreatorChosenCasting: Creator/JohnHughes always wanted Creator/MacauleyCulkin to star because of his experience while shooting ''Film/UncleBuck''.

* TheDanza: Catherine O'Hara as Kate [=McCallister=] in this film and the second.

* ColbertBump: The film featuring "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" by Johnny Mathis led to increased requests to hear it on radio stations during the holidays.

* WordOfSaintPaul: When Devin Ratray was asked what happened to Buzz later in life, he said he probably went to prison.

** Warner Brothers had originally greenlighted the film on the assurance it could be made for no more than $10 million. Very early on the producers realized they had underestimated how much it was going to cost, and worrying that Warner would balk at making the film for that much money[[note]]since it had some other very expensive holiday releases in the pipeline[[/note]], Creator/JohnHughes secretly took a meeting with Fox asking if they would be willing to take it over if it came to that and, uh, "accidentally" left a copy of the script behind (Fox legally wouldn't have been allowed to see it at that time)

*** Morning unit call was 7 a.m. This greatly bothered Creator/JoePesci, who already had some complaints about his character's dialogue being ridiculous. He finally took one of the assistant directors aside[[note]]rather roughly, apparently[[/note]] and explained that he would be in a much better frame of mind shooting his scenes ''if'' he could get in nine holes of golf in the morning. Accordingly, the unit calls were pushed back to 9 a.m.

** One last scheduling issue made things tight. Creator/JohnCandy could only work for one day, so ''all'' his scenes were done in a 23-hour marathon session. He did them all for absolute rock bottom scale and got paid a little over $400 ... less even than the actor who played the pizza delivery guy.

** It was originally scripted that Kevin was going to rain down more paint cans down the stairs.

** One trap cut not used in the final the film but used in the novelization (in place of the electric sink scene) featured Kevin using superglue on a piece of cloth that Marv would try to use to clean his face, and when it naturally got stuck, he yanked it off so hard that he also pulled his beard off in the process.

* BillingDisplacement: When Creator/ABCFamily (now Freeform) showed '' Home Alone 3'', they advertised it like Creator/ScarlettJohansson was the star, despite the fact that she was only a minor character in the film and had about 5 to 10 minutes of screen time. To quote one of the trailers, "Scarlett Johansson is taking on the bad guys."

* TheOtherDarrin: All of the returning characters are played by different actors. Daniel Stern, in particular, refused to go near the script, so Marv is played by French Stewart. And he is also dressed like Harry, for some reason.
* SequelGap: Came out five years after ''3'', and ten years after ''2'', which it is (supposedly) following up.

* WagTheDirector: The reason UsefulNotesDonaldTrump [[https://people.com/movies/home-alone-2-director-says-donald-trump-bullied-his-way-into-the-movie/ has a cameo]] is because Creator/ChrisColumbus wanted to film in The Plaza Hotel's actual lobby. Trump, the hotel's owner at the time, only agreed if he could appear in the film. Columbus was considering editing out Trump's scene, but eventually left it in after test audiences responded positively to it.

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: The film relies almost ''completely'' on the realities of life in ''pre-[[UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror 9/11]]'' America. Viewing it in the new century can be a bit of a time capsule, and reminder of how things used to be in ways the filmmakers could never have intended.
** If the film were made and set in TheNewTens and beyond, Kevin's parents would, at worst, have to sort out some new SIM cards for their cell phones in order to give Kevin's own cell a call. They weren't able to call the house due to the ''land-based'' phone lines being down and the house having no wireless phones, which was, in 1990 (and as a holdover from UsefulNotes/TheEighties) a fairly typical arrangement even for a well-off household like theirs. In the new millenium, even just before 9/11, Kevin would've been able to find a way to get his hands on a cell phone, and that would've opened up a number of additional solutions for his family to either get back home or get him to France with everyone.
** Nowadays, there are alarm clocks that hold regular batteries that activate when a power outage cuts off the main electrical supply, and a lot of people use the alarms on their smartphones to wake themselves up--so unless the backup battery of the alarm clock failed and wasn't replaced, or the person in question accidentally put the phone in sleep mode/forgot to charge it, a power outage wouldn't prevent Kevin and his family from waking up on time and going to the airport without incident. Ironically, the alarm clock in the movie actually ''does'' have a battery backup, as is advertised on the top edge of said radio--meaning his parents forgot to replace them, or never put them in at all.
** Harry and Marv, in the [=21st=] century, would've ''never'' discovered that Kevin was alone at the house; he'd already fooled them repeatedly into thinking that the house was still heavily occupied. The jig was only up when Kevin's father left a message about Kevin being home alone on a neighbor's answering machine- and Marv, who was in the middle of robbing that same neighbor’s house, overheard it while it was being recorded and told Harry, who realized the truth. Answering machines are all but gone today, in favor of private, electronic voicemail, and many homes no longer have landline phones anyway.[[note]]Although in that type of affluent neighborhood, many homes still do.[[/note]]
** On top of that, the lax airport security of the time is on full display as well. Kate is able to barter a plane ticket off of a fellow traveler ''right in the terminal''; that was still a little questionable even then but at least ''conceivable'' (and was a holdover from still earlier eras of air travel where the tickets were more like train or ship tickets), but anybody who attempted something like that in an American airport the [=21st=] century would probably be detained on suspicion of being a terrorist. Much more glaringly, there is the fact that the [=McCallisters=] would have ''never'' been able to get through [=21st=] century airport security in time to make their flight in the first place, giving them ample time to discover that Kevin is missing and go back home to him, preventing the plot of the film from ever unfolding.
** As noted, we have Frank tell Peter, "There's no way on Earth we're gonna make this plane. It leaves in 45 minutes!" before they get in the vans at their house, located in Winnetka, a suburb of Chicago. Without traffic, it's a half-hour drive from 671 Lincoln Avenue (their home address) to O'Hare International Airport. Not only are Chicago's expressways known to be ''very'' congested in both directions at rush hour due to the city's reverse-commute nature, but the airport would be even ''more'' crowded because they were catching a flight close to ''Christmas''--one of the busiest, if not ''the'' busiest, times of year for airports. In the [=21st=] century, even if the [=McCallisters=] somehow ''didn't'' hit any traffic and reached the airport in that time, they would still have to go through a ''lot'' of time-consuming steps once they arrived: checking in, printing their boarding passes, waiting in the security line, clearing the security checkpoint, and then making their way through Terminal 3 to their gate.[[note]]American Airlines is based out of Terminal 3, along with Delta Airlines[[/note]] Factoring in all of that, they would have missed their flight by almost ''two hours'' by the time they reached the gate. There is a reason why the airlines generally recommend that you arrive at the airport a full ''90 minutes'' before your flight (and even ''earlier'' for international flights). In the [=80s=], though, it was conceivable, if rather frowned on, for a person to show up to the airport with fifteen minutes to go 'till their flight and make it work, and many people would've had an experience somewhat like that at some point.
** For that matter, in UsefulNotes/TheNewTens and UsefulNotes/TheNewTwenties, the sheer ''opulence'' of the [=McCallister=] household can stick out a bit. The family is presented as being upper-middle-class, with Kevin's dad being a while collar worker of some sort, but not a tycoon or anything (he has to use vans and consumer air travel, for a start). The [=McCallister=] home is absolutely enormous and filled with ''stuff'' (so as to work as a great movie set), though; in the [=70s=] and [=80s=], it still wasn't terribly uncommon for people with middle management-style jobs or other mid-tier white collar jobs to be able to afford something like that, especially with perhaps a little clever investing. In the new millennium, a home such as this would only possibly be believable as the home of the moneyed investor class (which would give the whole film a somewhat different read).
** Mocked by WebVideo/HonestTrailers, who encourage you to "bundle up and relive the early 1990s joy of Micro Machines, starting lineup figures, Creator/JohnnyCarson, 35 mm cameras, landline phones, answering machines, pre-9/11 air travel and Macaulay Culkin."
** The worst part of it all is that this is almost the opposite of what was intended; director Chris Columbus has said that he and John Hughes wanted very much for ''Home Alone'' to have a "timeless" look and feel to it so that ten, fifteen, twenty, etc. years down the line, it could still be viewed and enjoyed by people and it not seem "dated". Unfortunately, this wasn't the case, though it isn't entirely their fault -- if nothing else, we were some way off from normalizing the kind of travel protocols which became common after 9/11.

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece:
** Similar to the original film, the [=McCallister=] family is once again late for the airport, and once again just barely makes it. While the fact they are taking airport shuttles allows them some leeway in not needing to find parking, it still comes with all of the same problems of the original film when comparing it to today's airport security. Also, the reason Kevin accidentally boards the wrong flight is that he is insistent on reloading the batteries in his tape recorder, and mixes up his dad for someone else. These days, Kevin would probably just use a similar feature included with most smartphones, and not need a separate device.
** Oh, and that Talkboy uses a cassette tape. How often are ''those'' seen anymore?
** The reason the [=McCallisters=] are late in the first place, Kevin's dad accidently unplugging his bedside clock and therefore resetting it and turning off the alarm that was supposed to wake them up on time. Nowadays, he, along with every other member of the family, would have the alarm set on their smartphones.
** No way in today's world would anyone even consider just letting a kid under age 10 without a parent/guardian around board a fully booked flight to New York. An even more boneheaded move was letting the [=McCallisters=]' flight take off with Kevin's unaccompanied baggage, post-Lockerbie (though we don't know if Kevin's baggage was checked to Miami as part of someone else's checked bags).
** There is no way that the Plaza Hotel would just buy Kevin's story about his dad being on a business trip, and then let him check into their hotel with a credit card that Kevin openly admitted wasn't his. While the card really did belong to Kevin's father, he was still illegally using it; in today's world, Kevin would have been arrested almost immediately.
** The famous shot of the Twin Towers during the New York montage is a ''powerful'' reminder that it was filmed before 2001. In the decade following, that shot was either edited out or kept the movies off airwaves entirely.
** It [[DreamingOfAWhiteChristmas snows in New York City around Christmastime]] in the film. New York City hasn't had a white Christmas since 2010.
** One of the big settings in New York is a dedicated toy store, which has become something more of a novelty in TheNewTens.
** UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump's cameo. At the time, Trump was largely seen as an eccentric billionaire, whereas today, his highly controversial political career has massively overshadowed this, clearly setting the film in a time before his reputation shift.
* WagTheDirector: The reason Donald Trump [[https://people.com/movies/home-alone-2-director-says-donald-trump-bullied-his-way-into-the-movie/ has a cameo]] is because Creator/ChrisColumbus wanted to film in The Plaza Hotel's actual lobby. Trump, the hotel's owner at the time, only agreed if he could appear in the film. Columbus was considering editing out Trump's scene, but eventually left it in after test audiences responded positively to it.

* TechnologyMarchesOn:
** Though it's somewhat mitigated by him staying in a hotel room with phone access, Kevin would have discovered Uncle Rob being out of the country much sooner by calling his townhouse from a cell phone.

** Most network broadcasts since 2001 cut out the scene where Kevin visits the World Trade Center's observation deck. VH1 retained it in a July 2021 airing, however.

** Since at least 2014, Canada's [[Creator/{{CBC}} CBC Television]] has cut the scene featuring UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump's [[TheCameo cameo]] where Kevin asks Trump where the hotel desk is. Despite this happening about a year before he announced his presidential bid, that didn't stop viewers (particularly Trump's own supporters) from [[https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-cut-from-home-alone-2/ alleging political motivations five years after the fact]], [[https://web.archive.org/web/20200101020649/https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1210350571452022784 including (not surprisingly) Trump himself]], who blamed Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (who wasn't even prime minister at the time) for the edits! Freeform and VH1 have retained the Trump cameo.

** Most network broadcasts since 2001 cut out the scene where Kevin visits the World Trade Center's observation deck.

** Since at least 2014, Canada's [[Creator/{{CBC}} CBC Television]] has cut the scene featuring UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump's [[TheCameo cameo]] where Kevin asks Trump where the hotel desk is. Despite this happening about a year before he announced his presidential bid, that didn't stop viewers (particularly Trump's own supporters) from [[https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-cut-from-home-alone-2/ alleging political motivations five years after the fact]], [[https://web.archive.org/web/20200101020649/https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1210350571452022784 including (not surprisingly) Trump himself]], who blamed Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (who wasn't even prime minister at the time) for the edits! Freeform has retained the Trump cameo, despite the fact that the channel targets a younger, more progressive demographic.

* OldShame: While she wasn't really deeply regretful about the movie, Creator/ScarlettJohansson conceded in an interview in ''Series/LateNight with Creator/SethMeyers'' that she was really surprised that, when she showed the film to her daughter, she was really into it, admitting that she though that "the plot is a little thin."

** The earlier script also had Kevin's mother dating a new partner, a police officer who it turned out at the end was Marv's younger brother, and the [[WhiteSheep polar opposite]] of Marv himself. The final script changed this to Natalie's, housemaid turning out to be Marv's mother, and her being, if anything, even ''worse'' than Marv himself.

* BillingDisplacement: When Creator/ABCFamily (now Freeform) showed '' Home Alone 3'', they advertised it like Creator/ScarlettJohansson was the star, despite the fact that she was only a minor character in the film and had about 5 to 10 minutes of screen time. To quote one of the trailers "Scarlett Johansson is taking on the bad guys."

** When Macaulay Culkin declined to reprise his role as Kevin, Creator/JohnHughes briefly considered writing the screenplay with Harry and Marv targeting Kevin's cousin Fuller, who would be the main character, with Gerry Bamman and Terrie Snell reprising their roles and Fuller's parents Frank and Leslie, respectively, who go on vacation and leave Fuller home alone, to defend himself against Marv and Harry. The idea was scrapped, as Pesci and Stern refused to reprise their roles, and wanted to pursue other projects, and Kieran felt he couldn't follow in his brother's footsteps as the lead. Hughes then wrote an entirely different screenplay with no characters from the first two films.
** Originally, the screenplay was written with the villains being former partners-in-crime to Marv and Harry, but when Macaulay Culkin and the rest of the first two films' cast declined to have any involvement with this sequel, John Hughes refused to make any reference or connection to the previous installments.

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%%% We get it, you don't like the fourth movie. Please no natter about how badly a spinoff series COULD have sucked.
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[[folder:Second Film]]

[[folder:Third Film]]

[[folder:Fourth Film]]

[[folder:Fifth Film]]

** UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump's cameo. At the time, Trump was largely seen as an eccentric billionaire, whereas today, his highly controversial political career has massively overshadowed this, clearly setting the film in a time before his reputation shift.

** UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump's cameo. At the time, Trump was largely seen as an eccentric billionaire

** UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump's cameo is quite painful after his ''massive'' fall from grace after his controversies since the 2016 Presidential election and especially after losing the 2020 Presidential election, inciting a riot that left his reputation destroyed and any reputable businesses still connected to him desperate to cut off all ties. What's more: the director considered cutting out Trump's scene, but kept it because audiences kept applauding to it. In the wake of the controversy, Macauly Culkin even made a just partly-joking suggestion that his 40-year-old self be edited into the scene in place of Trump.

** It [[DreamingOfAWhiteChristmas snows in New York City around Christmastime]] in the film. New York City hasn't had a white Christmas since 2002.

** UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump's cameo is quite painful after his ''massive'' fall from grace after his controversies since the 2016 Presidential election and especially after losing the 2020 Presidential election, inciting an riot that left his reputation destroyed and any reputable businesses still connected to him desperate to cut off all ties. What's more: the director considered cutting out Trump's scene, but kept it because audiences kept applauding to it. In the wake of the controversy, Macauly Culkin even made a just partly-joking suggestion that his 40-year-old self be edited into the scene in place of Trump.

** UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump's cameo is quite painful after his ''massive'' fall from grace after his controversies since the 2016 Presidential election and especially after losing the 2020 Presidential election, inciting an attempted coup d'état that left his reputation destroyed and any reputable businesses still connected to him desperate to cut off all ties. What's more: the director considered cutting out Trump's scene, but kept it because audiences kept applauding to it. In the wake of the controversy, Macauly Culkin even made a just partly-joking suggestion that his 40-year-old self be edited into the scene in place of Trump.

** Nowadays, there are alarm clocks that hold regular batteries that activate when a power outage cuts off the main electrical supply, and a lot of people use the alarms on their smartphones to wake themselves up--so unless the backup battery of the alarm clock failed and wasn't replaced, or the person in question accidentally put the phone in sleep mode/forgot to charge it, a power outage wouldn't prevent Kevin and his family from waking up on time and going to the airport without incident. Ironically, the alarm clock in the movie actually ''does'' have a battery backup, as is advertised on the top edge of said radio--meaning the batteries had either already died and his parents forgot to replace them, or were never installed in the first place.
** Harry and Marv, in the [=21st=] century, would have ''never'' discovered that Kevin was alone at the house; he had already fooled them repeatedly into thinking that the house was still heavily occupied. The jig was only up when Marv, in the midst of robbing another neighbor’s house, overheard a message from Kevin’s father--which unwittingly revealed that Kevin ''was'' home alone--being recorded onto its answering machine. Answering machines are all but gone today, in favor of private, electronic voicemail, and many homes no longer have landline phones anyway.[[note]]Although in that type of affluent neighborhood, many homes still do[[/note]]